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Sugar And Spice And Everything: Reflections On A Feminist Aesthetic, Deborah Smith-Shank

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Over the past 25 years, feminist art, art criticism, and action have allowed insights in to the work of women artists. Because culture imposes an assumed unity on a diversity of codes and has a naturalizing function, it makes the status quo appear as given and enduring. Feminist artwork disrupts common cultural assumptions by purposefully calling into question the arbitrariness of cultural sign systems. It brings into the conversation those cultural signs which are routinely unexamined and forces a look. This article is about feminist artwork, feminist context (s), and my own development as a woman, artist, teacher, and participant …